More Holiness Give me: My 40 Day Meditation Journey

I think it was the third time I read the challenge from Felice to try meditating for 40 consecutive days before I actually did it.  Felice made some great videos demonstrating how to tune in, tune out, and various Kundalini meditations for specific changes you want in your life.  I chose to do the Meditation for a Calm Heart shown here:

Around the same time I started the challenge, I was called to be the Relief Society chorister in my ward.  Basically, this means I conduct the music in our women's class during the third hour of church services.  I also got to make the schedule for the hymns for the rest of the year, choosing ones that correspond with the subject matter of the lessons we will be studying.  So, I was really immersed in our wonderful Hymn book at the time.  If you are familiar with my story about making the Hypnobabies cue word "Peace" spiritually significant with hymns, I'm sure you would see how very "me" it is that I chose to add singing hymns to my meditation practice.  I initially replaced the tune in manta with the hymn "More Holiness Give Me."  Later after watching this explanation of mantras, I decided to add "Ong Na Mo Guru Dev Na Mo" back in after the hymn.  "More Holiness Give Me is a perfect song for meditation, with it's chant-like melody and message of supplication and intention.  I replaced the song in this tune out video with an LDS hymn with a similar message, "Lead Kindly Light."

Meditation is supposed to create lasting change.  Lasting change doesn't happen overnight.  You have to do meditation for a while to see benefits.  Here are some of the things that changed over the course of the first 40 days I did this mediation:

• Though I'm still not perfect, I have become better at not responding with anger when my children do something that upsets me
• I put into action weekly at-home date nights, something I probably knew I should have been doing for a while, but never did before, which allows me to connect deeply with my husband
• I became more aware of the importance being an example plays in parenting
• I began committing to other positive habits, such as personal prayer and scripture study (which I usually do before or after meditating), weekly family home evening and (short) daily family devotionals and prayer
• I have explored and am working towards slowly implementing exercise, more consistent cleaning routines, and small changes towards a healthier diet.  I am also earnestly studying Gentle Discipline (I will probably write more about that in a future post)

I have an over-all sense of my life being on an upward trajectory.  I haven't really felt that way in a while.  I think I just have been neglecting spirituality.  I probably could have gotten on this path by working on my relationship with God without the Kundalini techniques, but for me, I think the fact that it was something different made it just interesting enough to motivate me to do it.  I also had a lot of challenges (a sinus infection for the whole family in the middle of travelling for my brother's wedding, followed by heavy menstrual bleeding that left me anemic) come into my life towards the middle-to-end of the 40 days and I think that was me being tested.  I am really glad I accomplished the 40 day challenge, and I am still meditating (still doing the Calm Heart, and now adding a Meditation for Healing Addictions--hoping it will help me not feel compelled to check Facebook so often).  I hope to see more blessings in my life from it.  I am also inspired to try other small changes by committing to do them for 40 days, so that they become permanent, and eventually all the small changes will add up to big change.

Sat Nam, and God Be With You Till We Meet Again :)